Managers Don't Understand Performance Management

The Evening Standard reported on 19th September this year that the Standard Mercer’s 2013 Global Performance Management Survey revealed that 6 in 10 managers are only ‘marginally skilled in providing career development coaching and direction’. The survey also said that only 3% of global organisations believe their performance management provides exceptional value.

Assessing employee performance has always proved difficult for managers and many would prefer not to have to do assessment at all. Clive Liddle, one of the Spearhead Training Group senior management trainers, says that delegates attending courses run by him often mention the following problems in conducting performance appraisals:
1) How to be truly objective in assessing the performance of staff you know well and with whom you socialise.
2) How to give an honest assessment without demotivating the employee, especially if their performance is poor.
3) How to deal with an employee with an exaggerated opinion of their performance.
4) Lack of training given to the manager in how to effectively judge performance and give advice on career development
5) Insufficient training in coaching to help improve employee future development.

So what advice does Spearhead Training, a well known supplier of management training courses, give to organisations and managers faced with assessing employee performance?

Richard Stone, the Training Director of Spearhead, says that: ‘first of all any assessment process must be transparent and easy to understand’. ‘The employee being assessed must have the opportunity to consider their performance, against known criteria, before meeting with the manager for the formal assessment’. ‘It is also important to have a system of assessment of the assessor’.

This is known as the Grandfather, Father, Son system, where the son is the employee, the father is the manager and the grandfather is the manager’s manager. The latter’s role is the review the assessment for fairness and lack of bias. Some organisations use what is known as ‘306 degree feedback’ a rather more complicated version of the Grandfather, father, Son system.

If you would like to learn more about management training courses from Spearhead Training then why not have a look on the company website by visiting www.spearhead-training.co.uk.

Spearhead Training Group is a leading supplier of quality management and sales training which is based in the UK. The company designs and delivers training for a diverse range of clients and offers both open and in-company training solutions to improve business performance.

18-19B Cheriton House
Cromwell park
Chipping Norton
Oxon
OX7 5SR
T: 01608 644144
info@spearhead-training.co.uk

This release was published on openPR.